The doctor was staring at an x-ray and said over his shoulder "let me guess, you think you need to see a masseuse or a chiropractor". "Yes" I said. "When was the last time you were without pain?" he asked. That was a hard question for me to answer. The funny thing about chronic pain is that you have to push it to the back of your mind, so that after a while, you just don't notice it even though it is always there. "I guess I've had constant pain since college". "35 years?" he asked. 
It was then I realized that pain had become such a part of my life that I could no longer really remember what it was like before chronic pain. Without really thinking about it, I was a different person. 
It strikes me that this is a good way into the spiritual nature of all of us. We are born into a world that is broken by war, compromised by revenge, grief stricken by tragedy, complicated by divorce and illness. And a great deal of our energy is spent healing what is broken around us rather than perfecting what already works well. 
It strikes me that the Christ was trying to describe a spiritually healed life to a bunch of people that have adjusted to one that is spiritually broken. It is appealing but it is literally hard for us to imagine.
This week we lift up the value of intentional living and the way that we come together as a community to help each other figure out who we are supposed to become. In this season of Lent, we remember that maybe, just maybe there is a better way for us to be than the original plan we devised.

The prayer chain this week is striking for the fact that we are lifting up three families in our immediate towns that have lost children tragically. These events are devastating enough that they ripple throughout the community. Every once in a while, I reflect on the scope and depth of that reality, remembering all those caught in war zones and areas where terror is a weekly phenomenon like Kabul or Aleppo. Those gashes rip apart the social soul for extended clans over generations.
My colleague, Rabbi Stuart Gershon, has observed that much of the distress of our world is actually a symptom of unresolved grief. The more I reflect on that, the more I suspect that he is largely right. Whether we want it to or not, tragedy and grief connect us with our more primal emotional self that has something of a subterranean depth to it. It stays with us years longer than we might like and it evinces a deeper power from below than we need it to. Resolving it productively is more complicated and profound than we wish it were. But perhaps this is one of those things that keeps us human and humane. Perhaps, this is the way that our suffering can actually be redeemed, not that we ever want to have to go through it. We just have to and maybe that is the point of this season when we walk, however distantly, with Jesus as he turns his face towards Jerusalem and the difficult part of the days of our lives.
May you be blessed to be the humane compassion of God to those in pain and may you awaken with the Spirit of God that reminds us of how wonderful it is to be alive through love. 

The Rev.